Architecture, law and politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Architecture, law and politics - Essay Example The obvious mistake in public housing over the last fifty years overshadows the occasional and long honored history of architect’s participation in social housing. Seventy percent of the cost of a new building is influenced by planning and design (Muir, 2013). Careful planning and sensitive design that save even the ten percent of those costs can reduce the monthly payments by over one hundred euros. Although any single design decision is not likely to yield dramatic savings and improved quality, thoughtful unit planning will. For instance, a social housing plan that does not utilize the space efficiently may call for long hallways, which add little to the dwelling and costs money to construct. Additionally, they need to be lighted and heated, an ongoing expense for the occupants of the social housing. For all that one might save by utilizing materials of poor quality and scrimping on space, such short-sighted penny-wise attitudes are ultimately costly both economically and so cially.     United Kingdom’s contemporary social housing can be tracked back to humanitarian responses to the overcrowding upon industrialization and urbanization of Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Outbreaks of cholera in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s significantly led to the creation of social settlement. Added with the release of a report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain by Chadwick in 1842 established the powerful direct adverse impact of industrialization on population health.